Cold heading process

Cold heading process revolves around the concept of altering initial steel “blank” through force, using a series of tools and dies to change the blank into a finished product. The actual volume of steel remains unchanged, but the process maintains or improves its overall tensile strength. Cold heading is a high speed manufacturing process that relies on metal flow due to applied pressure as opposed to traditional metal cutting. It is a type of forging operation which is carried without the application of any heat. During the process material in the form of a wire is fed into the cold heading machine, cropped to length and then formed in a single heading station or progressively in each subsequent heading station. During cold heading load should be below the tensile strength, but above the yield strength of the material to cause plastic flow.

The cold heading process uses high speed automated “cold-headers” or “part formers.” This equipment has the ability of transforming a wire into an intricately shaped part with tight and repetitive tolerances using a tooling progression at speeds up to 400 pieces per minute.

The cold heading process is volume specific and the process uses dies and punches to convert a specific “slug” or blank of a given volume into a finished intricately shaped part of the exact same volume.